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Beyond, The (US - BD RA)

Feature

In 1927 New Orleans, a mob descends on the Seven Doors Hotel, capturing the caretaker, an artist named Schweick (Antoine Saint-John), and murdering him for the assumed crime of witchcraft. Over five decades later, in 1981, Liza Merril (Catriona MacColl) inherits the hotel from a rich uncle and begins renovations. Little does she realize that the building lies atop one of the seven gateways to Hell. As the repairs are waylaid by a series of freak accidents and mysterious deaths, Liza is visited by a spooky blind woman named Emily (Cinzia Monreale), who warns her to abandon the project. Meanwhile, Liza befriends a local physician named Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck), who investigates Emily’s claims that re-opening the hotel will open the gateway.

Famed cult filmmaker Lucio Fulci had worked in movies since the early 1950s; first as a writer, then as a director, beginning with I ladri ( The Thieves) in 1959. During the post-WWII era, Italian cinema was a fad-driven industry, so Fulci dabbled in a broad scope of genres, including comedy, pop musical, parody, peplum (sword and sandal), spaghetti western, Eurospy, historical drama, poliziotteschi, and giallo. But it was violent, often gothic-tinged horror that came to define his later career. Known by fans worldwide as ‘The Godfather of Gore,’ Fulci broke out of the Italian genre ghetto and into the international spotlight with a 1979 cash-in on George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead called Zombie (entitled Zombi 2 in Italy, in an attempt to trick audiences into thinking it was a direct sequel to Romero’s movie). Following Zombie’s surprise success (by some accounts, its international profits may have out-weighed Dawn of the Dead’s), he enjoyed a brief period of relative creative freedom – the type usually only enjoyed by the region’s arthouse darlings (Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni) and international superstars (Sergio Leone, Dario Argento). Italian producers asked for more of the same, offering him an excuse to experiment with increasingly surrealistic and esoteric successions of horrific images. It seems that the only real guidelines were a minimal budget and the guaranteed presence of more flesh-eating zombies. Grindhouse and drive-in fans didn’t care, as long as the maestro continued dabbling in taboo-crushing gore effects. He obliged in kind.

Fulci’s most fervent fans tend to consider The Beyond (aka: L'aldilà and Seven Doors to Death, 1981) his masterpiece. It’s certainly hard to argue against the virtues of such an unrestrained, stylistic tour-de-force, even if, like me, you’ve grown to appreciate the director’s slightly more restrained and plot-heavy giallo efforts, especially Perversion Story (aka: Una Sull'altra and One on Top of the Other, 1969), A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (aka: Una Lucertola con la Pelle di Donna and Schizoid, 1971), Don’t Torture a Duckling (aka: Non si Sevizia un Paperino and The Long Night of Exorcism, 1972), and The Psychic (aka: Sette Note in Nero and Seven Notes in Black, 1977). The Beyond is usually grouped with City of the Living Dead (aka: Paura nella Città dei Morti Viventi and The Gates of Hell, 1980) and House by the Cemetery (aka: Quella villa Accanto al Cimitero, 1981) as part of a loose ‘zombie trilogy’, House by the Cemetery is Lucio Fulci's final fantasy horror epic. I personally prefer to consider Zombie the first part of the trilogy and The Beyond the last part, both because House by the Cemetery doesn’t feature any ‘zombies,’ but rather a self-made monster that kills so that he can harvest more organs, and because it doesn’t end on an apocalyptic note. This ‘non-canonical’ ordering also establishes The Beyond as a stylish, thematic climax, which fits the popular opinion that it representing the director at his creative apex.

In various interviews, Fulci described the construction of The Beyond as such:Quote: My idea was to make an absolute film with all the horrors of our world. It’s a plotless film: a house, people, and dead men coming from The Beyond. There’s no logic in it, just a succession of images. We tried, in Italy, to make films based on pure themes without plot and The Beyond, like Dario Argento’s Inferno, refuses conventional and traditional structures

He often repeated the same basic message in regards to both City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, though he’d occasionally use the term Artaudian in place of absolute. Other Italian genre filmmakers had dabbled in delusory, surreal imagery, but, like Roger Corman’s earlier Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, it was often framed within the confines of a dream – or more appropriately a nightmare sequence. As directors fought to get more shocking and exploitative imagery into their formula-driven giallo movies, hallucinations became more common. Examples include an imagined zombie sex scene in Armando Crispino’s Autopsy (aka: Macchie Solari, 1974) and an elongated giant spider rape fantasy at the heart of Riccardo Freda’s Murder Obsession (aka: Murder Syndrome and Delirium, 1981). Of course, one of the earliest examples of the practice was found in Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), which was directed by none other than Lucio Fulci.

Like the best of his Italian horror counterparts, Fulci didn’t only use gore as an excuse to titillate and shock his audience. Graphic violence also played a key role in the texture of his most Artaudian movies. Gore is rarely gratuitous, especially not in the case of The Beyond, where the bloody imagery serves the overriding theme – decay. The process of chemical and physical breakdown oozes from every nook and cranny of the film. The hotel is rotting – its basement impossibly waterlogged and its walls crumbling. Dr. John’s hospital is apparently a place of healing, but every room the characters wander into appears to be another morgue inhabited by another collection of impossibly decomposed cadavers. But the theme of gradual disintegration is most vividly represented in Giannetto De Rossi & Germano Natali’s gross-out special effects, including the fizzy oxidization of Schweick via shovel-fulls of quicklime and the poor widow (Laura De Marchi) who has a bottle of sulfuric acid poured onto her face by some invisible force.

Short of other ways to deconstruct the human body without weapons, Fulci calls upon the power of spiders for a particularly bewildering moment. This scene, in which Liza’s friend Martin (Michele Mirabella) is paralyzed by a fall and ravaged by spiders, fits the Artaudian method more aptly than maybe any other moment in the film (aside from perhaps the arbitrary acid bath), but it grinds the film’s undervalued momentum to a halt. It also features the most ineffective special effects in the movie. This often breaks the fragile suspension of disbelief in the audience members not already attuned to the fluctuations inherent in Italian genre output. The appearance of string-operated spiders that are meant to blend in with a couple of flesh and blood tarantulas and stretchy skin effects tend to elicit laughter and knocks the film down a peg to so-bad-it’s-good status for too many outsiders. It’s really regretful, because Massimo Lentini’s fastidious production design, De Rossi & Natali’s effects, and (especially) Sergio Salvati’s ominous cinematography usually overcome the budget limitations while bringing Fulci’s ultimate nightmare vision to the screen.

The Zombie Trilogy in its generally ‘preferred’ grouping (i.e. ending with House by the Cemetery) is linked by this base creative staff, as well as lead performances from British actress Katherine MacColl and screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, who wrote with and for Fulci from The Psychic in 1977, through Manhattan Baby (aka: Evil Eye) in 1982. Sacchetti was one of Italian horror’s unsung heroes after working with everyone from Mario Bava ( Bay of Blood, 1971) to Dario Argento ( Cat O’ Nine Tails, 1971), Sergio Martino ( Scorpion with Two Tails, 1982), Enzo G. Castellari ( 1990: The Bronx Warriors, 1982), Lamberto Bava ( Demons, 1985), Ruggero Deodato ( Cut and Run, 1985), Umberto Lenzi ( The Manhunt, 1975), Antonio Margheriti ( Cannibal Apocalypse, 1980), and Michele Soavi ( The Church, 1989). In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone important to the Italian genre scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s that he didn’t work with (Aristide Massaccesi is the only one that comes to mind). When Fulci didn’t call on Sacchetti’s services for his exceedingly weird barbarian fantasy, Conquest (1983), the two had a falling-out that eventually erupted in a legal battle. Neither man’s work was ever as good after the break-up, though Sacchtti managed to remain relevant in the industry much longer.

Fulci’s violence had long hinged on eyeball trauma. His career-defining moment was a scene in Zombie, in which a hungry ghoul pulls actress Olga Karlatos eye-first into a giant wooden splinter. City of the Living Dead continued the tradition with a demon priest who could make his victim’s sockets bleed just by looking at them. In regards to this, Fulci said that ‘(Eyes) are the first thing you have to destroy, because they have seen too many bad things.’ In The Beyond, an unfortunate plumber named Joe (Giovanni De Nava) has his peepers pressed out of his skull while searching for the source of the catastrophic leak in the basement. He later reappears in zombie/ghost form and shoves housekeeper Martha (Veronica Lazar) into a nail, which pierces the back of her skull and pops out her headlamp in a rush of goo and blood. The tarantulas that attack Martin also pluck out one of his baby blues before also removing his tongue. But The Beyond also treats the concept of eye trauma in a less literal sense. It is implied that Emily the blind ghost lost or perhaps even sacrificed her sight in order to escape Schweick’s influence (maybe even hell itself?). The film then ends with the protagonists inexplicably lost in Schweick’s painting. While running from their dread, their eyes milked-over white, just like Emily’s.

In an interview with Spaghetti Nightmares co-author Gaetano Mistretta (an audio version of which appears on this very disc), Fulci elaborated:Quote: What I wanted to get across in that film was the idea that all of life is often really a terrible nightmare and that our only refuge is to remain in this world, but outside of time. In the end, the two protagonists’ eyes turn white and they find themselves in a desert where there’s no light, no shade, no wind, no nothing.

Schweick’s painting is worse than a vision of the Christian concept of Hell, it is nothingness – a concept difficult to convey in a visual medium. This terrifying nihilism is conceptually similar to the existential dread Fulci favourite H.P. Lovecraft often described in his horror novels, which is the basis of an ongoing argument concerning the futility of trying to adapt such stories to film (note that both City of the Living Dead and The Beyond include direct references to Lovecraft’s literature, including the fictional town of Dunwich and the Book of Eibon). But, even without a grand Hollywood budget or the benefit of digital effects technology (the mostly nude, zombified bodies in the ‘real’ representation of the painting were famously portrayed by homeless men that the production staff paid in alcohol to lay still for the camera), Fulci is able to convey stark metaphysical terror in these final shots.

Author James Russell acknowledges another quote from Fulci in his book, Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, that suggests the director’s discontent with his own crisis of faith (which likely stemmed from a longstanding depression following the death of his wife in 1969) plays into The Beyond’s frighteningly empty version of hell:Quote: I think that each man chooses his own inner hell corresponding to his hidden vices. So I am not afraid of hell, since hell is already in us. Curiously enough, I cannot imagine a paradise exists, though I am Catholic. Perhaps God has left me? Yet, I often envisage hell, since we live in a society where Hell can be perceived. Finally, I realize that paradise is indescribable. Imagination is much stronger when it is pressed by the terrors of hell.

Video

Grindhouse Releasing ran into some trouble while producing this long-gestating Blu-ray release. From what I understand, the release was pushed back due to packaging issues, not issues with the transfer. This is their third release of the film, following two anamorphic DVDs, one they put out in 2000 in conjunction with Anchor Bay and Quentin Tarantino’s now defunct Rolling Thunder Pictures (who also helped with the distribution of a ‘midnight movie’ theatrical run), and a self published version of that same disc. Before that, most stateside fans had only rare VHS copies from Thriller Video (a ‘big box’ edition with illustrations ripped from EC Comics) and LD Video Productions (a singularly ugly box with a photo of Charles Gray, who does not appear in the film) or a budget, non-anamorphic DVD from Diamond Entertainment. These and most of the grey-market video versions (I remember renting one with a ghostly airbrushed image on the cover) were the censored, 80-minute US release version, released under the title Seven Doors of Death (or sometimes Seven Doors TO Death).

An fun side effect of the review copies being held off for a couple of weeks is that I was able to see a (different?) 35mm print of The Beyond that Grindhouse is currently touring for midnight showings. The tour print is not in great shape – it’s littered with artefacts and missing the occasional frame – but is also clean and bright enough to be a good representation of what the movie would’ve looked like in theaters. It helped give me an idea of Fulci’s and Salvati’s original intentions as far as gamma correction, colour timing, and contrast. For this review, I am comparing my memories of the 35mm print to this new HD transfer (top images), Arrow Video’s older Blu-ray release (middle image), and Grindhouse’s original anamorphic DVD (bottom image). I don’t think there’s any question that both Blu-rays are a substantial upgrade over the particularly dark, noisy, and misframed (about 2.30:1?) DVD. What is surprising is how different the two HD versions are. I had expected only minor variations between the two.

I assume Arrow got their scan from the same Italian source that supplied them and Blue Underground with various horror, giallo, and spaghetti western movies. Those transfers were all marred by CRT noise and blobby gradations, as was this one, though to a lesser extent. The issue presented itself in the guise of smoothing effects (basically DNR enhancement), crushed black edges, and spackled dancing noise around some of the edges. Grindhouse’s transfer has some issues with compression artefacts (slight noise/cross-colouration, low level noise) and is a bit rougher than the Arrow release, but it doesn’t look as digitally processed. In terms of texture, grain structure, and blending, it is the more natural choice. The Arrow release appears a bit sharper in these screen-caps, because the harsher gradations create harder elemental separations and, on occasion, crisper lines. But, again, the Grindhouse disc features more complex grading, which leads to more delicate details.

The colour-timing and gamma is completely different between all three releases. Needless to say, the DVD is too dark, to the point that one of my screen-caps looks like a blank, black frame. The Arrow disc, on the other hand, is a bit too light and too yellow – another common side effect of those faulty Italian CRT scans. Grindhouse’s image offers a more eclectic palette with pinker flesh tones, richer reds (important for all that blood), and a cooler overall tone (aside from the sepia tone pre-credit sequence, which is oranger on the Arrow disc). The tweaked gamma and contrast seem like a comfortable middle-ground between the DVD and Arrow’s Blu-ray, which does lead to some detail loss in the darkest shots, but also maintains a better, more Fulci-esque ‘mood.’ Salvati’s photography contrasts the darkness with some really bright images – especially the fluorescently-lit, blue-tinted hospital interiors and the eerie highway bridge shots – so both companies are toeing a fine line when setting their exposure levels.

Audio

When Grindhouse and Rolling Thunder first prepared The Beyond for its theatrical re-release and original DVD release, they remixed the original mono soundtrack into 5.1. I am personally not a fan of this track. Despite the best efforts of Academy Award-winning sound designer Paul Ottosson ( The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty), the additional effects, which are added to broaden the scope of the track, sound too ‘artificial’ to my ears. This Blu-ray offers a total of four audio options – the 5.1 remix in DTS-HD Master Audio, a 2.0 downgrade of that remix in Dolby Digital, the original English mono in 2.0 DTS-HD MA, and the original mono in Dolby Digital. The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is the most intense and expressive of the four. The uncompressed nature allows for big volume without any distortion (I actually had to turn it down below my normal settings so as to not drive the neighbors crazy) and, despite the digital tinge to the audio, I have to admit that Ottosson remained true to the spacey, nebulous qualities of the original soundtrack. I still prefer the mono English version, which is also presented quite clearly on this disc. Some of the louder overlapping noises are slightly muffling without, but the issue doesn’t overwhelming the track. The addition of the Italian version is nice for the sake of comparison, but the film was shot without sound and the two leads dub themselves on the English track, so there’s nothing more authentic about the Italian language version.

The 5.1 version does wonders for Fabio Frizzi’s soundtrack score as well, likely because Ottosson was working from a stereo source. There are some off moments, like the spider scene, where music is tossed way into the back speakers, but the spread mostly works. Frizzi seemed to have a bigger musical budget with each successive Fulci movie and was able to call upon a Mellotron tape-relay keyboard to create pretty convincing orchestral arrangements. He also included a real human chorus, including, reportedly, famed pop singer Nora Orlandi. Orlandi worked in many spaghetti westerns and gialli throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s (one of her songs from Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh can be heard sampled in Kill Bill Vol. 2). House By the Cemetery ended up being a more polished score and City of the Living Dead was his spookiest, but I find little reason to argue against the general consensus that The Beyond was Frizzi’s masterpiece.

Extras

This three-disc set (two Blu-rays and one CD soundtrack) features a mix of old and new supplements, but the new does outweigh the old, making it the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection available. Disc One:

Commentary with stars Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck – This track was originally recorded for an unreleased laserdisc and was first heard on Grindhouse/Anchor Bay’s DVD.

Introduction by actress Catriona MacColl (1:00, SD, from the DVD)

Color version of the sepia pre-credit sequence in both German and English (both 8:20, SD)

Looking Back: The Creation of The Beyond (48:00, HD) – New interviews with producer Fabrizio De Angelis, screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, cinematographer Sergio Salvati, Fulci’s daughter (and personal historian) Antonella, poster designer poster artist Enzo Sciotti, composer Fabio Frizzi, and actor Giovanni De Nava (Joe the Plumber). The discussion covers the scope of the director’s career with emphasis on his horror output, before focusing more directly on the production of The Beyond. Despite being little more than a series of talking heads and stills, this extended featurette moves along quickly and includes plenty of anecdotal nuggets that even fans like myself might not have heard – especially anything concerning sales, Sciotti’s art, or Frizzi’s music.

The New Orleans Connection: Larry Ray (44:30, HD) – An new interview with American actor Larry Ray, who only appears in the film for about 3 minutes (he’s the guy that falls off the scaffold), but also acted as translator, location manager, local casting director, and more. It’s a great outsider’s view of the enigmatically Italian production.

Beyond and Back: Catriona MacColl (34:10, HD) – A new and extremely personable interview with actress and three-time Fulci collaborator.

Making it Real: Giannetto DeRossi and Maurizio Trani (32:30, HD) – New interviews with make-up artist/designer Giannetto DeRossi and special effects artist Maurizio Trani, both of whom cover their long working relationships with the director.

Lucio Fulci interview conducted on August of 1988 (part one 20:10, part two 13:00, SD) – A two-part audio interview (with subtitles, naturally), parts of which were published in Spaghetti Nightmares.

Beyond Italy: U.S. Distributor Terry Levene (19:10, HD) – An interview with the U.S. distributor, borrowed from Arrow’s Blu-ray release.

Still galleries including production stills, behind-the-scenes photos, and promotional images from around the world.

Grindhouse Releasing Prevues

’And You Will Live in Terror’ music video by Necrophagia (5:20, SD, Easter Egg)

Then and now footage of the film’s locations, most of which were used for the interviews (1:30, HD)

Overall

Grindhouse Releasing’s new Blu-ray is the new high standard for The Beyond on home video. The 1080p image is very strong and true to the original material. It is marred only by minor, possibly unavoidable noise issues. The soundtrack options are diverse and the extras are almost insanely comprehensive, including hours of new interviews and a bevy of older supplements. In the end, this new disc is a substantial enough upgrade to recommend a double-dip to any fans that already own the previous versions.

I’ve often wondered where, in the greater cinematic universe, the other six gateways to Hell could be. One obviously lies in City of the Living Dead’s Dunwich, Massachusetts, while another may be on Zombie’s island of Matool. I’d like to think that the haunted Brooklyn brownstone of Michael Winner’s The Sentinel (1977) somehow relates to the Fulci-verse (it certainly inspired The Beyond) and could be convinced that the alchemist’s apartment in Dario Argento’s Inferno (1980) was also a hub for Satan’s minions. The other two are a mystery.

* Note: The above images are taken from the Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray release, the Arrow Video Blu-ray release, and the Anchor Bay/Grindhouse DVD and resized for the page. Full-resolution captures are available by clicking individual images, but due to .jpg compression they are not necessarily representative of the quality of the transfer.

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A great review Gabe. I liked all the Fulci movies I have seen, though admittedly, I haven't seen them all. He was very creative with gore. The Beyond was an amazing horror film.

BTW, one of the fatalities in the new Mortal Kombat (Mortal Kombat X) seems to pay a direct tribute to (or is inspired by/ ripped off from) the "spontaneous evisceration" scene from City Of The Living Dead. The character Ermac levitates his opponent in the air and causes all the opponent's innards to come out of the mouth as his fatility.

Extras:
Cast Commentary, Catriona MacColl Introduction, Colour Versions of Sepia Sequence, Trailers, TV Spots, Radio Spots, Memories of Lucio Fulci, Looking Back: The Creation of The Beyond, The New Orleans Connection: Larry Ray, See Emily Play: Cinzia Monreale, Making it Real: Giannetto DeRossi and Maurizio Trani, Lucio Fulci Interview, Interviews and Q&A from Eurofest '94 and 1996 Festival of Fantastic Films, Still Galleries, Grindhouse Releasing Prevues, ’And You Will Live in Terror’ Music Video, Then and Now Set Comparisons